Tajikistan

The Postwar Period

The post-World War II era saw the expansion of irrigated agriculture,
the further development of industry, and a rise in the level of education
in Tajikistan. Like the rest of the Soviet Union, Tajikistan felt the
effects of the party and government reorganization projects of Soviet
leader Nikita S. Khrushchev (in office 1953-64). Especially in 1957 and
1958, Tajikistan's population and economy were manipulated as part of
Khrushchev's overly ambitious Virgin Lands project, a campaign to forcibly
increase the extent of arable land in the Soviet Union. Under Khrushchev
and his successor, Leonid I. Brezhnev (in office 1964-82), Tajikistan's
borders were periodically redrawn as districts and provinces were
recombined, abolished, and restored, while small amounts of territory were
acquired from or ceded to neighboring republics.

During the Soviet period, the only Tajikistani politician to become
important outside his region was Bobojon Ghafurov (1908-77), a Tajik who
became prominent as the Stalinist first secretary of the Communist Party
of Tajikistan in the late 1940s. After Stalin's death in 1953, Ghafurov, a
historian by training, established himself as a prominent Asia scholar and
magazine editor, injecting notes of Tajik nationalism into some of his
historical writings.

The fate of Ghafurov's successors illustrates important trends in the
politics of Soviet Central Asia in the second half of the twentieth
century. The next first secretary, Tursunbai Uljabayev (in office
1956-61), was ousted amid accusations that he had falsified reports to
exaggerate the success of cotton production in the republic (charges also
leveled in the 1980s against Uzbekistan's leadership); apparently the
central government also objected to Uljabayev's preferential appointments
of his cronies from Leninobod Province to party positions (see
Russification and Resistance, ch. 5). Uljabaev's replacement as first
secretary, Jabbor Rasulov, was a veteran of the prestigious agricultural
bureaucracy of the republic. Like first secretaries in the other Central
Asian republics, Rasulov benefited from Brezhnev's policy of "stability
of cadres" and remained in office until Brezhnev's death in 1982.

Rasulov's successor, Rahmon Nabiyev, was a man of the Brezhnevite
political school, who, like his predecessor, had spent much of his career
in the agricultural bureaucracy. Nabiyev held office until ousted in 1985
as Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev (in office 1985-91) swept out the
republic's old-guard party leaders. Nabiyev's 1991 installation as
president of independent Tajikistan, by means of an old-guard coup and a
rigged election, exacerbated the political tensions in the republic and
was an important step toward the civil war that broke out in 1992.

All the post-Stalin party first secretaries came from Leninobod, in
keeping with a broader phenomenon of Tajikistani politics from the postwar
period to the collapse of the Soviet Union--the linkage between regional
cliques, especially from Leninobod Province, and political power. Although
certain cliques from Leninobod were dominant, they allowed allies from
other provinces a lesser share of power. As the conflict in the early1990s
showed, supporters of opposing camps could be found in all the country's
provinces.

The forces of fragmentation in the Soviet Union eventually affected
Tajikistan, whose government strongly supported continued unity. Bowing to
Tajik nationalism, Tajikistan's Supreme Soviet adopted a declaration of
sovereignty in August 1990, but in March 1991, the people of Tajikistan
voted overwhelmingly for preservation of the union in a national
referendum. That August the Moscow coup against the Gorbachev government
brought mass demonstrations by opposition groups in Dushanbe, forcing the
resignation of President Kahar Mahkamov. Nabiyev assumed the position of
acting president. The following month, the Supreme Soviet proclaimed
Tajikistan an independent state, following the examples of Uzbekistan and
Kyrgyzstan. In November, Nabiyev was elected president of the new
republic, and in December, representatives of Tajikistan signed the
agreement forming the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS--see
Glossary) to succeed the Soviet Union.

Antigovernment demonstrations began in Dushanbe in March 1992. In April
1992, tensions mounted as progovernment groups opposing reform staged
counterdemonstrations. By May, small armed clashes had occurred, causing
Nabiyev to break off negotiations with the reformist demonstrators and go
into hiding. After eight antigovernment demonstrators were killed in
Dushanbe, the commander of the Russian garrison brokered a compromise
agreement creating a coalition government in which one-third of the
cabinet positions would go to members of the opposition. The collapse of
that government heralded the outbreak of a civil war that plagued
Tajikistan for the next four years (see Transition to Post-Soviet
Government, this ch.).